Psycho Sleepover

With an impressive body count (north of two dozen) and zingers to match, Troma’s Psycho Sleepover delivers the goods you’d expect from a film with that title.

Debbie Dicky’s lecherous boyfriend is sick of blue balls and Eskimo kissing and her inability to take things as far as he’d like.

After a spat with him, Debbie is prank-called by a prankster who plays her Entrance of the Gladiators, AKA, that “circus clown big top music” (Editors’ note: that piece, incidentally, was military march music from the late 19th century, prompting the question, how can anyone win a battle with THAT as the call to arms?)

She arms herself with a kitchen knife and asks all the pertinent horror questions (“Is anyone there?”) and the usual horror film declaration (“It’s not funny guys”) and soon, in this loving tribute/send-up of slasher banalities, a killer clown is after her with an axe.

Debbie runs outside to a nearby park and then gets the better of him with a knife to the groin, sending him hilariously hurtling down a flight of stairs. Who is that masked man? Check it out for yourself. The motivation for the attack is pure Troma hilarity/vulgarity.

Flash forward in true slasher fashion and Debbie’s moved to a new town. She meets three girls who invite her to a sleepover. (Mom’s sage advice: “One night out won’t kill you!” Terrific.)

Naturally, there’s a madmen on the loose as the local insane asylum’s security is not up to snuff. (It never is. Time for mental hospitals to employ permanent employees and to lose the staffing agency temps.) However, the girls at the slumber party are not be as helpless as the killers think.

A grapefruit-gnawing psychiatrist from the terrifically named Murderton Home for the Criminally Insane makes a house call, as Debbie’s father and ex were both, it turns out, serial killers.

Psycho Sleepover has more than a few outstanding killings including a hand-in-a-blender (that’d make for a nasty smoothie) neck snap combo. Also, a guy dressed as a hobo is asphyxiated with his own bindle and a mime bites it in terrific fashion, seconds after doing the “man in a box.”

Star rating depends on affinity for Troma releases. We’re game but realize many aren’t. See for yourself.